Interviews at Legion Park Farmer’s market

Today our team took a short road trip to Legion Park to meet Art Friedrich and Jeannie Necessary with Urban Oasis Project and with Roger Horne of Urban Greenworks.

I felt it was a great success. We first interviewed Art and Jeannie chimed in once so, I made a note to follow-up with her because she had some interesting things to say about health literacy and how campaigns really don’t work.

Art’s interview was revealing in that perhaps the term “food desert” isn’t the best term to use especially when talking with people who live in communities designated as such. He mentioned that it may further discrimminate. That brought to mind a term I read about while visiting the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Museum earlier this year. I’m still searching for the photo I made but if memory serves, it had to do with how labels can make a person start to believe they don’t deserve x, y, or z.

Roger Horne is quite a force. When he launched with how he approaches food security with a more holistic mindset, that resonated with me. Why? Because I don’t believe in things — good or bad — occurring in isolation. There are reasons why and it is important to understand them; including human behavior.

My teammate, Mackenzie was kind enough to offer transcription of the interviews so as soon as those are ready my next step is to read, synthesize, and ideally translate into a better understanding of the problem we are trying to solve.

This is Part 4 in a series documenting my learning experiences developing a solution to address food deserts, food security, health literacy, and health for populations. This project is part of our Designing Innovation course with Professor Lien Tran at the University of Miami, School of Communication. I am an IMFA (Interactive Media Master of Fine Arts) candidate.

Identify Stakeholders

Our team started to map out our initial list stakeholders and came up with an initial brainstorm or “map” of people we believe would have a vested interest in any solution that addressing food security.

Since that meeting, we met via Google Hangouts to identify more people to interview and determine what questions to ask. We also decided to create a group of questions that we would ask each person; something that might reveal some insight we wouldn’t be able to capture by asking different questions to each person.

Individually, we did our own research and discovered some surprising people to interview, including a Top Chef and a roommate who lived in a food desert.

Here we created a “working” list of people we would love to interview (below) and we expanded on the stakeholder list as we learned more about the larger community.

After creating a working list of people to interview, we created another draft of questions to ask our interviewees. We also agreed to ask our interviewees a small number of the same questions to identify and determine if there are any patterns or contradictions. These are the questions (subject to change):

What is your definition of a food desert?

How can social media and technology play a larger role in raising awareness of food deserts?

What kind of cultural barriers exist to addressing food deserts?

Please tell me about how food access impacts one’s health?

What do you think is missing to help address food deserts?

How does your work help to address the food desert issue?

Who or what organizations are successful in addressing food deserts? How are they accomplishing it?

What is the biggest change that you would like to see within your community, in order to help eliminate food deserts?

Since we have four people in our group and tasked with interviewing 3 each, we also opted to ask questions specific to each person:

For the pediatrician:

Do you have patients who live in food deserts?

What common diseases do they have? Are these diseases directly related to unhealthy diet? Does other family member suffer from the same diseases as children?

Who are the main source of health education (parents, school, friends)? How would you help your patients to engage in health education?

For the registered dietitian:

How does the diet of someone live in a food desert affect their overall well-being and health?

What are the factors that contribute to dietary behavior at a household or ‘family’ level?

How would you help someone change their lifestyle habits who has lived in a food desert?

For school administrators:

How many students are affected by food deserts within your school?

How does being located within a food desert affect students? Does it affect their learning/focus or health/attendance within the classroom setting?

What is the school’s outreach for those families that are affected by lack of access to healthy food?

For parents:

What are the biggest challenges of living within a food desert?

Tell me about where you buy fruits and vegetables. How far do you travel and how long does it take you? (Follow up: Why? Or I’d love to hear more about your transportation.)

Are there programs or Urban Gardens that you may participate in? What is the community outreach for living within a food desert?

What kind of fresh foods do you try to incorporate into your daily routine that are more nutritious, if any? How do you get access to those foods?

What is the biggest change within your community that you would like to see in order to help eliminate food deserts?

For a student: (If possible)

Do you provide your own meals for school? “Pack a lunch? Or eat at school?” Why?

What kind of meals are you provided with?

What kind of education is being provided on food, health and nutrition?

Are there programs or Urban Gardens that you may participate in? Would you be interested in being a part of an Urban Garden within your community of school?

For chefs Jeremy Ford and Michelle Bernstein:

What inspired you to join the #DrinkGoodDoGood social media campaign?

How can restaurants play an active role in raising awareness of food deserts?

For friend who lived in a food desert:

What was done to improve the situation while you lived there?

If you wanted fresh groceries, how did you go about getting them?

Did you know you were moving to a food desert?

For holistic health practitioner:

Do you have patients who live in food deserts?

How does the diet of someone live in a food desert affect their overall well-being and health?

How would you help someone change their lifestyle habits who has lived in a food desert?

For Health in the Hood:

What makes your program unique from other food desert outreach efforts?

How has your program affected the food desert population? Did raising awareness about food deserts lead to other benefits as well?

How were the head gardeners selected?

For Urban Oasis Project:

Describe your long-term vision for Urban Oasis.

What motivated you to start Urban Oasis?

What makes the Urban Oasis Project different from other food desert organizations?

Tell me about some of your most successful campaigns. Why?

Tell me about a failure. What did you learn?

What barriers do people face to access healthy foods? (transportation is a big hurdle)

What challenges do you believe face food desert communities in the near future?

I’d like to hear more about your Urban Farmer Incubator Program.

For a food systems specialist:

Tell me about your job as a Food Systems Specialist

What are the challenges for underserved communities at the policy level?

Tell me about SNAP and how it can help?

What programs—outreach initiatives, education, etc.— are doing well and what more would you like to see? (around the state, the country, the world.

What non-U.S. solutions are working in the world?

What challenges do farmers and organization who wish to help underserved communities face?

What are some of the psychosocial factors that may prevent people from going to a farmer’s market, a new grocery store, etc. in their neighborhoods?

For a local Farmer and activist:

What motivated you to start an urban farm and garden as well as all of your other initiatives?

Tell me about farmers’ markets in general.

Tell me about any challenges or barriers Urban Greenworks has faced in bringing community gardening, education and other health initiatives to people?

How can schools be an access point for change?

What more needs to happen at the policy level to help address food and health in underserved neighborhoods?

What challenges do you (or farmers and gardeners) face in growing and feeding your communities?

What do you believe is most misunderstood about food deserts?

How does geography impact food access?

Which aspects of the local food environment (e.g., availability, price, convenience) are most relevant to health

For a small farmer (New York state):

In what ways does food access impact one’s health and/or the health of a community?

Who or what organizations are successful in addressing food deserts? How are they accomplishing it?

Tell me about what motivated you to be a farmer and in what ways farmers can help contribute to the solution of providing healthy food to people who lack access?

What would be the challenges/barriers as a farmer in contributing to the solution?

What benefits might you see?

Please tell me about your thoughts about farmer’s markets and their relationship to food deserts.

For a public health professional:

What are some successful efforts to address the food desert issue?

Please tell me about policy and how it is affecting the disparity in diet and overall health.

What community relationships do you see would work best to help address public health? (Schools + local farmers? Food trucks + Doctors?)

What kind of solution would help to address food choices?

In addition to transportation and prices, what other barriers exist to access healthy food?

Note: We also decided that whatever solution takes shape, that we would want the intervention to be adaptable and usable in other states and cities; not just Florida. This is why we opened up the list of people to interview nationally.

Field trip! Legion Park Farmer’s Market this Saturday.

This weekend, we will be heading to Legion Park Farmer’s Market as a group to meet up with two people from the Urban Oasis Project — Art Friedlich, President of Urban Oasis Project and Jeannie Necessary, Board President and Food Systems Specialist. We may also meet Roger Horne, co-founder of Urban Greenworks and Cerasee Farm.

This is Part 3 in a series documenting my learning experiences developing a solution to address food deserts, food security, health literacy, and health for populations. This project is part of our Designing Innovation course with Professor Lien Tran at the University of Miami, School of Communication. I am an IMFA (Interactive Media Master of Fine Arts) candidate.

Identify and focus on a problem

This week, we spent some time in class mapping the multitude of problems and pain points within healthcare and the health and wellness of people/communities.

This process is known as affinity clustering; a way of sorting items based on similarity. It minimizes the overwhelm of big ideas, problems or when writing an important paper. This process also helps to identify themes and patterns. It is a wonderful group exercise.

Create Teams Around Health & Wellness

(Honestly, I could not have planned this any better as every topic was an interest. In fact, I had met with Maria just a week earlier to brainstorm ideas for a project. Education and health related problems were at the top of our list.)

I learned about food deserts while studying clinical nutrition at the Maryland University for Integrative Health in a class that gave us an overview of how food and politics in communities. It was eye-opening and infuriating; a definite wicked problem and one I wanted to investigate further now and perhaps in the future. I suppose it was in learning about the social determinants of health that planted the idea that I was meant to stay in design but shift the space in which I worked. Perhaps.

Reviewing and refining our work.

Thankfully, in addition to Maria, two other classmates — Mackenzie and Laura — were also interested in tackling this problem! I’m eager to work with them.

This is Part 2 in a series documenting my learning experiences developing a solution to address food deserts, food security, health literacy, and health for populations. This project is part of our Designing Innovation course with Professor Lien Tran at the University of Miami, School of Communication. I am an IMFA (Interactive Media Master of Fine Arts) candidate.

Today was my first class in the IMFA (Interactive Master of Fine Arts) program.

Designing Innovation is being taught by Professor Lien Tran and we were presented with a design brief titled, Designing the Anti “Social” Network. This will be our first project.

Project Objective

We currently live in an era in which we spend more time connecting via technology, social media, and social networks and more time physically away from each other than with each other. One might say that technology and social networks has made us artificially or superficially connected to each other rather than allowing us to genuinely connect as an authentic community or to develop authentic relationships with people. Ironically, technology and social platforms in general have made us more antisocial. Youth are more comfortable communicating via apps than they are talking to someone IRL (in real life).

Assuming the role of a designer, your objective for this assignment is work in small teams to research and analyze existing “social” networks and related products/features and to propose the design of a new system (or new feature to an existing system) to:

enhance an existing community;

enhance social interactions;

create a new community; and/or

enhance “how people weave together within communities and wider society as a whole” (CHI 2019 SDC)

First Exercise: Identities and Communities

How we as a class identify ourselves.

This exercise was incredibly fun and a first step in the process of defining a problem to address for our first project. While we learned about each other and our interests (I’m among kindred spirits!), we also learned how we identify ourselves but also how others might self-identify and in the broader sense, how we belong to communities within communities within communities and so on. It’s a fascinating way to look at how we relate to each other and the world in which we live.

The communities to which we belongProblems we want to solve or pain points we experience.

This is Part 1 in a series documenting my learning experiences developing a solution to address food deserts, food security, health literacy, and health for populations. This project is part of our Designing Innovation course with Professor Lien Tran at the University of Miami, School of Communication. I am an IMFA (Interactive Media Master of Fine Arts) candidate.

What is the BCNS CNS exam?

If I pass … no, when I pass the exam — ahem— I become a Certified Nutrition Specialist, “the best clinical nutrition” credential. [Source] From what I’ve read, it is the highest level, nationally recognized credential for clinical nutrition practitioners.

And, why is the CNS credential important?

I was surprised to learn that not all states recognize nutritionists. Only RDs (Registered Dietitians) are recognized by many states and the (U.S.) government to be qualify for licensure to practice, get reimbursed for insurance due to health care laws, and I’m sure other forms of legal protection and benefits. [Source] So, that means it would be illegal for someone who doesn’t have the RD licensure to practice in states such as Maine, Ohio and Montana. [Source] States regulate nutrition practices so, your mileage, er training varies. This could affect where you practice and how you label and market your services. For example, if you call yourself a Health Coach and you are in a state that only allows licensure for RDs, a clear disclaimer should be on your website and marketing materials. As The Health Coach Group advises, it is vital for you to do your due diligence and “hire an attorney”.

What other factors influenced my decision?

There are so many but here are a few others:

Remote, online training

I live in Syracuse, NY. My husband loves his job. A remote marriage, living apart for me to go to school? Uh, not for me. MUIH offers courses online, in a classroom or a hybrid version. Flexible for everyone, especially professionals looking to make a career change.

Cooking labs

I love to cook and I want to be better at it. I want to learn techniques, develop recipes and most important, learn the science behind foods and how the body uses food. While there are plenty of culinary schools and nutrition schools that have a solid cooking sequence, most did not offer a remote option if at all. It sounds odd to learn how to cook remotely but I was assured it goes well. I’ll let y’all know how it goes. Stay tuned.

Areas of Study

My area of concentration is Nutrition and Integrative Health but MUIH also offers Yoga Therapy, Health Coaching, Health Promotion, Herbal Medicine, and Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine. This excites me because the nutrition track requires taking electives such as Food Systems and Policy, Herbs for Home Use, Health Education, Sports Nutrition, and more. As a future “whole health” practitioner and advocate, exposure, understanding, and training in other areas seemed a no-brainer.

I researched a lot of schools and programs. I talked with so many people, attended webinars, listened to podcasts, and seriously, I spent hours reading and comparing programs. It made my head spin. The entire process led me to this: choosing where and how to train is about being honest with yourself.

Questions I asked myself:

How do I learn best?

Can I handle a remote, online course?

How does my husband feel about this?

Why do I want to go back to school?

Can we afford it?

What could my future look like?

What would be my dream job or work environment?

What would I need to do to make this happen?

My decision arrived after a ton of soul searching for I think 2-3 years — hot mess —but I’ll save that for another time.

For now, I hope this helps those of you who are in the process of figuring out where to get your training. Please let me know if you have any questions. I’ll do my best to share my experience and information.

I’d also love to hear from others who are in school or have graduated. Why did you choose your program?